Month: April 2017

As mentioned in my initial blog post on SovLabs, you would have to create custom code in vRO to support the automation of many of the additional steps like custom naming, IPAM, DNS, AD, Load Balancer, but with SovLabs software modules this is really easy. Below are my notes for the prerequisites and the initial installation of the SovLabs modules.

Some prerequisites needs to be completed before installing the plugin:

Configure the vRO service accounting in vRA

Login to the root vRA tenant

Click Administration -> Users & Groups > Custom Groups

Create a Custom Group

Enter a group name and description.

DO NOT put spaces in the group name.

Select the following roles listed in the Add Roles to this Group box

Tenant Administrator

XaaS Architect

Click Next

Type in the vRO service account or vRO service account group

If this account does not appear make sure it is sync’d.

Click Add

Configure vRO endpoint in vRA

I have an enterprise install with external vRO so I am assuming you already setup the external vRO server in vRA.

Login to vRA tenant

Click Infrastructure tab > Endpoints > Endpoints

Click on New > Orchestration > vRealize Orchestrator

Enter the information

Click on New Custom Property.

Name: VMware.VCenterOrchestrator.Priority

Value: (number, 1 being highest priority)

Click OK

Configure extensibility message timeout in vRA

Login to vRA tenant

Click Infrastructure tab -> administration -> Global Settings

Click the Extensibility lifecycle message timeout row

Click the Edit button

Input a value that will be greater than the longest event workflow subscription timeout (e.g. 04:00:00)

Execution permission in vRO

This is necessary for vRO to execute external applications and perform actions like ping.

These steps also need to be performed on all vRO nodes.

SSH/Putty vRO server as root

Modify the vmo.properties file:

vi /etc/vco/app-server/vmo.properties

Press the i key on the keyboard

Copy & paste the following line to the end file:

com.vmware.js.allow-local-process=true

Press the esc key on the keyboard

Type in :wq! and press the Enter key

Modify the js-io-rights.conf file:

vi /etc/vco/app-server/js-io-rights.conf

Press the i key on the keyboard

Copy & paste the following line to the end file:

+rwx /tmp

Press the esc key on the keyboard

Type in :wq! and press the Enter key

Ensure that the file has the appropriate permissions:

cd /etc/vco/app-server

chown vco:vco js-io-rights.conf

chmod 640 js-io-rights.conf

Restart the vRO server(s)

service vco-server restart

EMC and Kerberos configuration in vRO

There are some additional steps that you need perform if you are using EMC FEHC 3 and 4, as well as Kerberos.

I am not using these so will skip but documentation provides all the information needed.

All CMP solutions let you deploy a VM out of the box, but what then?
We all know that it takes way more than just a VM to get a fully functional system.
There are many steps to consider when deploying a VM and application, here are just to name a few but this list can get very long:

Computer name assignment base on company computer naming policy

IP address assignment

Register with DNS

Join Active Directory

Appropriate security permission applied

Server build runbook applied

Get a virtual IP address from Load Balancer

Create/Modify firewall rules

Install application

In most IT organizations these steps would normally require a handoff between different departments and this is where IT becomes too slow to provide services and resources to the business to get their products to market faster. Cue in “Shadow IT“.

If you want this extensibility you have to either develop it yourself or reach out to some manufacturer for custom services. This is very expensive and might work on day 1 but when vRA or an application gets updated, and API’s change then your custom code no longer works, ouch!

SovLabs solution is great because it provides you with software that you can own and pay support for and provide the automation for all the steps mentioned above. This means you can get to that Day 1 much faster and don’t have to worry about Day 2. Awesome where do I sign up!

The list of SovLabs modules available are extensive which means the business applications you use today is probably supported so SovLabs will just tie in directly without many changes required. The following modules are listed on the website and can also be review here:

Core Pack:

Custom naming

Microsoft AD

DNS

Microsoft

Infoblox

Bluecat

BT Diamand IP

IPAM

Microsoft

Infoblox

Bluecat

BT Diamand IP

Solarwinds

Notification

vSphere DRS

vSphere Snapshot management

Advanced bundle:

Configuration Management

Puppet Enterprise

Puppet OpenSource with Foreman

Ansible Tower

Red Had Satellite

Service Management

Servicenow (SNOW) CMDB

Container management:

Multi-cloud Docker

In my upcoming blogs I will be showing just how easy it easy to install and configure these modules.

Ever since the release of vRA 7.1 I have been trying to make time to test the new silent install. My initial results were not very positive and I ended up spending hours with VMware GSS trying to figure out what is going with their scripts. In the end GSS pretty much gave up and asked me to wait for the release of 7.2.

So here we are today and I finally had some time to complete my tests with vRA 7.2. Spoiler alert! its works pretty well!

So since vRA 7.1 it provides an option for scripted, silent installations which uses executable that references a text-based answer file.

Where a silent unattended/scripted install makes sense is for repeatedly deploying multiple identical.
To start off with, the silent install does not install the appliance OVA (would be nice future enhancement) and this has been to deployed upfront, as well as the deployment and configuration of the Iaas Windows server.
The unattended silent install is then performed from the console of the vRealize Automation appliance utilizing the vra-command which was also introduced in 7.1.

Prerequisites for silent install:

Deploy the vRA appliance, but do not log in and start the installation wizard!

Deploy IaaS Windows servers . vRA prerequisites are NOT required since this is done through the silent install (this was broken in 7.1)

Verify network connectivity and DNS naming resolution.

Install vRA management agent on IAAS windows server.

My testing environment will consist of a simple install, but I will try to provide another blog for an enterprise silent install in near future.

To make this silent install even more useful I am using some codes snippets from an awesome script that William Lam created, which allows me to automatically deploy the vRA appliance as well as the IaaS management agent.

There are 3 files required to run this.

vRA_simple_install.ps1

Script which runs all the tasks to complete. Only need to run this.

ha.properties

This is a answer file which need to filled out with your vRA deployment information.

VRA7-Iaas-Windows-MngtAgent-Install.ps1

Script installs the Management Agent on IaaS server.

So my additional requirements:

vRA IaaS server is running

Complete the ha.properties answer file with your vRA settings.

Update the vRA_simple_install script

make sure to update the folder location where the files reside

Update the VRA7-Iaas-Windows-MngtAgent-Install script

Now just run the vRA_simple_install script.ps1. Steps performed in the Script:

Deploy vRA appliances

Install vRA Management Agents on IaaS server

Copy ha.properties to the vRA appliance server

Run vRA silent installer

Prerequisites installed and configured on the Windows IaaS servers. This is enabled in the answer file.

This take a long time, go make a cup of tea!

Review the logs on vRA appliance

/var/log/vcac/vra-ha-config.log

I am not a programmer so I am sure the scripts can probably be configured in a different/better way but here they are. If you have any feedback to make this better please let me know.